Harry swallowed and looked down with a nod. "Yeah. I've tried to get more comfortable calling her Mother, but it's hard. Draco does it so naturally. And I look at her and I see a mother sometimes, but sometimes I see a woman who hates Muggles, and would have hated me if I didn't turn out to be her son."
"What could she do to get you to trust her more?"
Harry eyed her. "She said something the other day that made me think she'd talked to you. She is talking to you, isn't she? Do you go and tell her everything that I've said?" Harry shuddered a little. He could only imagine the earful he would get if Mrs. Malfoy heard that he thought she was terrible at picking out names.
"I will not tell her what you have said in these sessions," Healer Letham promised. "And I am only working with her in my capacity as your Healer. I am trying to make sure that she knows being the mother of a traumatized child is not the same as being the mother of the visionary child she hoped and dreamed about."
Harry slumped in his chair. "Because I'm such a disappointment."
"Not that at all. Simply, as I said, that she had mythologized how rescuing you would go. You would appear, and it would be as if the years had never passed at all and she would have the child she had dreamed of back. That is simply not the case, and she is beginning to accept it, Harry."
Harry studied her from under his fringe. "You don't hesitate to call me that name."
"Of course not, but I don't have the associations that the Malfoys do with it." Healer Letham shifted so another foot was dangling down near the floor again. "Now, think on the questions I've asked you for a few minutes. Is there anything Mrs. Malfoy could do that would make you more comfortable accepting her as your mother? And do you think you would prefer a name other than Henry?"
Harry opened his mouth to object about it, but Healer Letham said, "I don't think a few minutes have passed," and he shut his mouth again and sat back in the chair, thinking.
Mrs. Malfoy tried her best to act as a mother, he thought. She was trying. He didn't know what else she could try.
And he meant what he had said about the name. It was just there, and he would get used to it as more people called him that. In school he had sometimes felt like a Henry when he was reading the letters that the Malfoys sent him. Since he'd been home, he'd felt more like a Harry, simply because he didn't fit in with what the Malfoys expected of him.
He glanced up and shook his head.
Healer Letham didn't look upset, although Harry had braced himself for her disappointment. "Well, think on it. And I'm sure that if you did choose a name other than Henry that wasn't Harry, and you liked it enough to be going on with, then you could get the Malfoys to use it, as well."
Harry just nodded, although he was thinking that he would probably always be a Harry, and that was just the way it was. "Yes, Healer."
....
"Those robes look marvelous on you."
Harry fidgeted as Mrs. Malfoy looked at him with a beaming smile on her face. He was glad that she was so happy, but honestly, over robes?
And they did not look marvelous on him. They were like the robes that the Malfoys had filled his cupboard with since he came to the Manor for the summer, all tight and uncomfortable and formal. And they all had silver on them somewhere, like silver trim, or they were just made of silver cloth. Harry didn't know why the Malfoys were obsessed with silver, but he didn't like it.
Mrs. Malfoy stepped in front of him, and abruptly stopped smiling. Harry looked at her warily. They were in the middle of a wizarding tailor's called The Right Fit, and behind her was a huge expanse of red and green and blue silk formal robes that Harry hoped he never had to wear. They looked like he would trip over them if he took a step.
"Oh, Henry." Mrs. Malfoy reached out to cup his cheek, and Harry found himself leaning into her hand without thinking about it. He did like spending time alone with her. He just didn't like the way they were spending it. "You're unhappy. What is it? The robes? The color?"
"Both," Harry said, and ducked his head a little when he saw how stricken she looked. He didn't like causing his mother pain like that. He didn't like causing anyone pain. "I just—they're too tight, and I don't like them, and I think they wash me out."
"On that last, you're wrong," Mrs. Malfoy responded gently. "They go with your coloration. Draco wears robes like that all the time."
"And we're identical twins, so what looks good on him has to look good on me. I know." Harry sighed. "Forget I said anything."
"No, I will not." Mrs. Malfoy's voice was quiet. "I want to know what you would like, Henry. What can I do for you? What kind of robes you would prefer to buy?"
Harry swallowed. She sounded like she meant it. And she wasn't Aunt Petunia, who would pretend sometimes when he was really little that she was going to buy something just for Harry and then laugh at him for believing her.
No. Mrs. Malfoy just abuses house-elves.
Harry put aside those thoughts for a second, because he didn't think they would help. He took a deep breath and said, "Just casual robes, like the ones that we wear at school. Can we do that? I don't really care that much about the color, as long as they don't have silver or gold everywhere. It—it makes me feel like I'm galloping around being royal or something. I hate it."
"Malfoys are not royal, but we do have the money to buy you anything that you want, Henry. You have only to ask."
"School robes and casual robes are different things," added the tailor, Farthingale, abruptly appearing around a corner. He was a tall man with white hair and golden eyes who probably would have made a good Malfoy, Harry thought. "But we can certainly introduce the young master to a selection of casual robes, if that would work for both of you, Mrs. Malfoy."
"It works very well for me." Mrs. Malfoy's voice was quiet. "What about for you, Henry?"
Harry nodded hesitantly a second later. It seemed that he might get rid of the horrible silver robes after all, and look more like a normal person. Even if nothing about his life had ever been or would ever be normal.
At least his clothes would be.
And the way Mrs. Malfoy smiled when she saw him smiling outdid all the beaming looks that she'd ever given him before.